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Aug 17

Resize the Vista Sidebar

Posted in: Features, Freeware, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows Vista

This article was written on August 17, 2007 by CyberNet.

Vista Sidebar Resizer Lately I’ve been becoming more acquainted with the Windows Vista Sidebar. I’ve never been a big fan of these sidebars in the past, but after browsing through the gallery I’ve found some great gadgets that bring a lot of information to my desktop.

One thing that Microsoft did, however, is put gadgets on multiple "pages" once a user has filled up the sidebar. You would then use the left and right arrows at the top of the sidebar to shuffle through the multiple pages of gadgets.

Back in June Ashley reviewed a free application called the Windows Sidebar Styler. It’s a nifty little application that gives users the ability to style the sidebar with different skins. Yesterday a new version was launched, and one of the big new features is a sidebar resizer. Instead of gadgets overflowing onto multiple pages, they will then show up in multiple columns.

Resizing the sidebar is about as natural as it gets. You just grab the edge and drag it to the width that you want it. What I’ve noticed though is that enabling this completely disables the "page" feature for the sidebar. This could become a problem if you have, for example, 4 pages worth of gadgets, but your sidebar is only wide enough to display two of those pages. The rest of the gadgets that aren’t displayed will never be visible to you.

Some of you might be wondering why you would want a wide sidebar in Vista since it would just take up more room. The sidebar doesn’t actually have to be on top of all the other windows, and instead can just appear as part of the desktop. Sure you could drag the gadgets off from the sidebar onto the desktop, but the sidebar makes it nice and easy for you to keep them organized.

Note: You’ll find the option to enable a resizable sidebar by pressing the "More" button:

Vista Resiable Sidebar